This blog is totally independent, unpaid and has only three major objectives.
The first is to inform readers of news and happenings in the e-Health domain, both here in Australia and world-wide.
The second is to provide commentary on e-Health in Australia and to foster improvement where I can.
The third is to encourage discussion of the matters raised in the blog so hopefully readers can get a balanced view of what is really happening and what successes are being achieved.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

What Do You Do When You Get A PCEHR Review You Don't Like? You Rewrite It!

Back in the late 1990's I did a review (with Paul Clarke and some really good people) of General Practice Computing.

Linda JACKSON, assistant secretary eHealth policy branch, states “disclosure of the report would be contrary to the public interest”.

There are two sides to this argument. They are:

1. IF the report POSITIVELY supports the PCEHR, including the approach and processes involved in its development, it is in the public interest to publish the report in full forthwith.

The public taxpayer has over $1 billion invested in the project and given the extensive media coverage around the PCEHR it is in the public interest to provide immediate reassurance the money has been well spent. The best way to do that is to publish the report in its entirety.

2. IF the report is CRITICAL of the PCEHR, including the approach and processes involved in its development, it is in the public interest to publish the report in full as a matter of urgency and to freeze further expenditure on the project as part of the national fiscal constraints now being imposed in the lead up to the Federal Budget.

Either way the report should be released forthwith FOI notwithstanding.

Furthermore, the bureaucrats should not be permitted to sanitize the report, as to do so will badly compromise the Minister to the point of embarrassing the Government should the original version of the report submitted to him subsequently find its way into the public arena.

Time for an investigative journalist to get stuck in, this time the target being not ministers but corrupt senior bureaucrats across two two governments. 1 billion of public money wasted, and no accountability. Labor won't dig because there are no points against current government and they'd get some blame. Current govt could do it but has already been hanging on to the report for too long, and having had a couple of recent scandals with ministers, is probably in total defence mode. But they could - they are doing it with pink batts. Are there any journalists left?